Page:"The Mummy" Volume 1.djvu/13

it into a story. It will so far gratify your wishes, as to give you a hero totally different from any hero that ever appeared before. You hesitate," continued he, again smiling, and regarding me earnestly: "I read your thoughts, and see you fear to sketch the scenes of which you are to write, because you imagine they must be different from those with which you are acquainted. This is a natural distrust: the scenes will indeed be different from those you now behold; the whole face of society will be changed: new governments will have arisen; strange discoveries will be made, and stranger modes of life adopted. The restless curiosity and research of man will then have enabled him to lift the veil from much which is (to him at least) at present a mystery; and his powers (both as regards mechanical agency and intellectual knowledge) will be greatly enlarged. But even then, in his plenitude of acquirement, he will be made conscious of the infirmity of his nature, and will be guilty of many absurdities which, in his less enlightened state, he would feel ashamed to commit.